She Plays Here proposal could bolster women’s sports in Utah

Lacy Mile spends much of her time looking for a place her women’s football team can practice.

Mile, a linebacker for the Utah Falconz, has been on the semiprofessional team for the last five years. She’s spent the last four on its nonprofit board. But instead of focusing just on blocking assignments and fundraising, Mile also has to worry about when and where her team can play.

The Falconz have been around since 2015 and won six conference championships and two national titles. Their record is a dynastic 77-10 in that span.

But chances are you barely know they exist — partly because they are in a different park or high school field every week, having to compete with every boys’ sport that is given priority over those spaces.

But a winner of a Salt Lake City design contest for the Ballpark neighborhood might change that. It’s called She Plays Here, and it promises to, among other things, modify the Salt Lake Bees’ current baseball stadium to include a rectangular space that can house football, soccer, rugby and ultimate frisbee.

“Not only does it give us a space, but it brings all of those women’s teams together, too,” Mile said.

The She Plays Here concept was one of three winners of the Ballpark NEXT design contest — a way for the city to receive a wide range of feedback to see what people wanted to see come of the central fixture in the Ballpark neighborhood.

She Plays Here won in the Professional Applications category. The other winners were in the Resident Applications and Student Applications categories. The Ballpark’s next usage could be any one of the three contest winners — or any other idea the city feels is best for the community.

In addition to football, Utah has semipro teams in rugby (Utah Vipers), ultimate frisbee (Utah Wild) and roller derby (Beehive Skate Revolution). And they all have similar issues of space scarcity, just like the Falconz.

Jennifer Parsons plays on the roller derby team at the recreational level and is also one of the directors of Salt Lake Roller Derby, the nonprofit organization that runs all the squads in the area. Her team has a “dusty, dusty warehouse” in the Granary District where it practices and plays. But it will soon be torn down, she said.

Parsons, whose derby name is Jammy Dodger, has been looking for another space. But she hasn’t had any luck yet. She hasn’t even been able to find a place with more than one bathroom.

That’s why the She Plays Here project excites Parsons so much. In addition to augmenting the stadium, the proposal calls for several ancillary services and spaces — like locker rooms, bathrooms, proper storage, and child care.

“If we had all these facilities that we could share together, that would be huge,” Parsons said. “We could get so many more people involved, and we could all have more stable programs as a result.”

The women’s sport at the highest level in the Beehive State was the Utah Royals FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. The team was in Utah from 2018 to 2020 before being sold and relocating to Kansas City. The Royals are returning in 2024 as an expansion team.

The Royals averaged nearly 10,000 fans per game in 2018 and 2019. The women’s gymnastics and volleyball programs at BYU and the University of Utah draw plenty of fans as well.

But while there’s evidence to suggest there’s an appetite for women’s sports in Utah, that hasn’t been the case with the semipro teams. The reason, players and officials say, is the lack of a consistent playing space makes it nearly impossible for the public to latch on.

“You can’t go watch something if you don’t know it exists,” Parsons said.

Shannon Woolley has played on the Vipers rugby team since 2014 and is also tasked with finding fields for practice and play. Their normal location is under construction for the installation of turf, so that’s no longer an option.

For the Vipers, getting the She Plays Here complex built would change things “completely,” Woolley said. For one, they’d have a place to play, but perhaps more important would be the ability to obtain sponsorships, which Woolley said is currently difficult without a consistent home field.

The Vipers play at one competition level below the professional Women’s Premier League. Woolley said the women’s sports complex would increase visibility for rugby, thus allowing the WPL and national rugby teams to take more notice of players from Utah.

“If we can’t be seen, we can’t be picked up,” Woolley said.

Players on the Utah Wild ultimate frisbee team actually get paid. They earn $150 per season and get travel and lodging covered on road trips. Most of that funding comes from sponsorships, running events, fundraising, and merchandise sales.

But Erica Bindas, president of the Wild’s nonprofit board, still has to scrape for field space, whether that’s at Sunnyside Park by the U., Riverside Park in Rose Park or the indoor Spence-Eccles Field House at the U. Sometimes the team is forced to practice outdoors in the winter, Bindas said.

Some of the women’s teams that have joined forces to get the She Plays Here project off the ground had never heard of each other. But they’ve become united in their common goal for equity in the Salt Lake City sports scene.

“All these different organizations are in kind of different spots, but we have so many of the same pain points, so many of the same struggles and experiences,” Bindas said. “So it was cool to kind of come on board and realize how much alignment there was and then determine that there was a really viable solution for this space that could help solve all those problems.”

It’s not just women who want a women’s sports complex, either. Aabir Malik, a real estate developer with the Colemana Group, is one of the people advocating for She Plays Here. The company he works for owns land adjacent to Smith’s Ballpark.

Malik said learning about the struggles women’s sports teams are having with field space was “eye-opening” for him. That’s why he jumped on board with plans to develop the area near the stadium. One of the ideas he has is bringing in small businesses that provide services for other small businesses.

Malik added that it would only take two to three months and cost approximately $1 million or less to augment the stadium to accommodate more sports. Developing around the stadium would take about two years, he said. Those timelines appear to be much shorter compared to the other proposals the city is considering.

An added benefit to the women’s sports complex, Malik said, would be giving players a platform to address important women’s and social issues.

“Like a lot of minorities, women in the field of sports have been underrepresented,” Malik said. “If we give them a platform to be seen and heard, I guarantee that they’re going to talk about things that need to be discussed on a broader level that we just don’t discuss as a society.”

The She Plays Here proposal winning the city’s design competition provides no guarantees it’ll actually get done because it’s not legally binding. The city has to allow bids on development of the parcel on which the stadium sits through a RFP (request for proposals) process.

Those involved with the project worry that it’ll get stuck in government bureaucracy and perhaps never come to fruition.

But the proposal itself has the athletes who play women’s sports not only feeling excited about the possibility, but that it’s been a long time coming.

“We don’t need it,” Falconz player Tina Tela said. “We deserve it.”

Editor’s note • Tessa Arneson, founder and CEO of Maven District, submitted the She Plays Here concept. Arenson is a member of the nonprofit Salt Lake Tribune’s board of directors.